1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to input devices having a fingerprint reading sensor, and more particularly to an input device having a pointing device function and to a pointer control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a device provided with various functions including fingerprint recognition has been proposed. For example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-283026, the touch pad having a finger reading function and an information processing apparatus are disclosed. In this application, a description is given of a case where a sensor for detecting a fingerprint and a position sensor for detecting the position which a finger touches, which conventionally are provided in separate units, are provided in a single unit, and position data in the vicinity of the center of the finger touching the sensor is sent as coordinate information to a computer. Also, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 4-158434 discloses a pointing device of a display apparatus. This application discloses the invention of moving a cursor on a display based on the moving direction and moving distance of a finger that are obtained by fiber print patterns detected at regular time intervals. In addition, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-275233 discloses an information processing system, pointing device and information processing apparatus. The application gives a description of the invention of determining the moving position of a pointer based on the difference between a fingerprint image and a verified image detected by using Fourier transformation.
As described above, in the conventional input device, the pointer on the display is controlled by detecting the difference of the movement of the finger.
However, in the method of detecting the movement of the finger, there is a disadvantage in the operability since the finger must be actually moved, and at the same time, a larger device is required since a sensing part is required, resulting in cost increase.